Point, slack and compass. Much smaller income differentials in life expectancy, 0.2 to 3.6 life-years smaller for Veterans in 2010-17 are estimated. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. They were glad to see me as it had been a while for replacements with the unit. Nothing could be further from the truth. On Sun, Mar 8, 2020 at 4:00 PM CherriesWriter Vietnam War website wrote: > pdoggbiker posted: A friend recently sent me the link to an article > claiming that the life expectancy of a radio operator in the Vietnam War > was only 5 seconds. Still, militarily, the Tet Offensive was a total defeat of the Communist forces on all fronts. Eventually I found a spot where the bed leveled off and began firing on the NVA. Nervous, I set up my gun on the hill and loaded a new hundred-round belt. A dense mass of elephant grass hung over the riverbank, and he ducked under it. Es ridculo que t ______ (tener) un resfriado en verano. Got hit inside 15 minutes, first ambush we walked up too. Please do not send samples. It was always quick/quick, load the bodies in and get the hell out. The article was interesting. 15 May he was killed by friendly fire, and a host of us were WIA, myself included. Was Billeted near an Army medevac Unit and was offered a chance to lay on my stomach with an M16 and door gun for them I decided not a good Idea. I picked up my M60 and walked to the center of the perimeter, where I found the company commander, Capt. It was an HONOR and a privilege to serve with these brave men for my 11 month tour. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Both served in A 2/18 1st Infantry Division. The American military did not lose a battle of any consequence. The 140,000 evacuees in April 1975 during the fall of Saigon consisted almost entirely of civilians and Vietnamese military, NOT American military running for their lives. Vietnam War soldiers endured many hardships and faced many problems. (and yes, you cant ask them, so it would have to be derived from the AA-reports and survivors). Cluster F, SNAFU and FUBAR fer sur. The average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is four hours, a Marine said. approaching a village and a firefight starts). HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. I personally carried 300 rounds of ammo at all times, one belt in the gun and two across my chest. Sorry,I was one of your Brothers in Arms that helped talk you out of enlisting for another year in Vietnam. maybe your question i vauge. A soldier or Marine in Vietnam had a 98% chance of survival if he was evacuated within the first hour of being injured the best odds in the history of American warfare up to that time. I quit trying to make sense of all the numbers that have been generated about Vietnam. We were probably not too far away on that day. The battalion was sending us to a village with a small river running through it. 1 Gun onto a small hill and provide security while others retrieved them. I agree with all of the comments, however I would add Tunnel Rats to the group I was one and saw many of my friends die in those tunnels I was very fortunate or very lucky and was never a lead but was at the tail end. Over 900,000 patients were airlifted (nearly half were American). I was one of the lucky ones I came home without a physical scratch. They were great patriots fighting for their families and their homeland. Vietnam Veterans represented 9.7% of their generation. We are a woman-owned small business and Veteran-owned incorporated in Ohio. There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia (primarily Cambodia) the first two years, after the fall of Saigon in 1975, than there were during the ten years the U.S. was involved in Vietnam. Soldier,this is a wardont forget that, and anytime we are in a fight we will be toughest SOBs in the fight!! I always found life expectancy numbers interesting in that I could never find any supporting information that could be validated. US Wings is a verified SAM Contractor and DLA Supplier and is officially listed as a manufacturer/retailer in the US Department of Commerce's Office of Textile and Apparel (OTEXA) Made in the USA database. Before he was drafted Renza had worked as a hairdresser for women in his hometown of Peekskill, New York. Welcome Home Brothers ! I couldnt see DeLong and didnt know if No. See you in the next life!!!!! As far as I knew that was done in the whole battalion in 1968 . Americans who deliberately killed civilians received prison sentences while Communists who did so received commendations. His body was torn to pieces. We walked the mountains and rice patties all thru Tu Thien Province. He was not the type to hump a radio. Units would send a thorough report of their KIA and WIA, battle action coordinates, estimated enemy troop strength, enemy unit KIA/captured and any known direction heading. Or is it on display in a Hanoi museum so curious citizens of that city can inspect a weapon captured from American imperialists? LUCK pure LUCK. I was stationed on 2 FSBs (8 & 175mm guns) west of Tay Ninh on the Cambodian boarder in the Ho Chi Minh trail and was wounded but nothing as bad as he was. Umm..maybe its because we also learn from experience. Calculate the pH of a solution of 0.157 M pyridine. Our Aussie Dust off choppers had door gunners, we worked on the theory if the Noggies would shot at Red Cross choppers, we would return fire, Aussie grunt, 60000 00 Aussies fought in Vietnam, Up the Old Red Rooster and more beer. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. It was just part of the job. 1 Gun and I survived our first firefight. Amazingly, the NVA men then walked a short distance away, sat down and ate lunch. Five RTOs. Sure but so was everyone else who went 12 months without getting killed or wounded. We were like sitting Ducks. At age 55, World War 2 Veterans Naturally I was excited at the opportunity to join Sanzone, but at the same time I hated leaving 2nd Platoons No. Both my tours were in the Delta (IV Corps) where the only ground troops were regular ARVNs and RUFF/PUFFS. The group found the first man killed and carried him up the hill, placing his body right next to me. To cut the Ho Chi Minh Traila week after the mission endedthe trail was booming with business from the north.. And us the living that served, who suffer from PTSD ,that figure or percent-aged would be about the greatest of all. 1 Gun kept a lot of enemy heads down. Artillery, and ground forces. I wasnt aware that they kept life expectancy statistics. We observed the rules of the Geneva Convention while the bad guys had no interest in doing so. Id had a premonition, and asked the LT to let me trade off to become the AG. Information presented by SFC (Ret) David Hack. I think the number of Army and Hospital Corpsmen serving with the Marine Corp was very high, with the ratio of the number of them over there. As soon as he did, a round hit him in the forehead, blowing out the back of his skull. But I made it back in one piece. There were no Americans involved in any capacity. 1 Gun was firing. Flipping the safety off, I scanned the jungle in front of me. We then took all Trucks and equipment to the Port Of Saigon. The Department of Defense Vietnam War Service Index officially provided by The War Library originally reported with errors that 2,709,918 U.S. military personnel as having served in-country. https://open.spotify.com/show/5Th7BCpIKDE1hVTqNL3u0Q. We wanted a break. Some unfortunately also came home with physical scars. Thats why I never understand people talking about survivors guilt it should have been me, why him? etc. The three of us had trained together at Fort Lewis and were good friends. I was over there twice serving as a Hospital Corpsman with a marine unit. The Australian Vietnam veteran study assessed the postservice mortality of 19 205 Vietnam veterans and 25 677 non-Vietnam veterans through 1981. Then the tempo changed suddenly and violently. _____ 1. 4 Paul Domke, who carried extra belts of ammo and fed them into the gun. The Vietnam War was the first American war in which Black and White troops were not formally segregated, and even saw significant growth in the number of African Americans engaged in battlefield combat, [1] though some de facto segregation still occurred. Vietnam Veterans are less likely to be in prison only one-half of one percent of Vietnam Veterans have been jailed for crimes. Was I lucky ? 2) by my research, medics suffered 93% casualties with about 33% deaths. I always felt that Infantry units were in more danger because of ambush issues and no permanent defensive structures. Both served in A 2/18 1st Infantry Division For some reason, the written word of this article was somehow deleted and lost. At this time- senior Army leadership ordered us all to read the Geneva Convention to our troops because of the My Lai debachle. We had run patrols for about a month when I first saw action. Hurrying forward with No. We flew north, then made a stop, in Cam Rahn Bay. From the Landing Zone, we were carried not too far. In our spare time we did medevacs and medcaps for the local communities and when required inserted SEALs . Without the helicopter it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the 800 mile border with Cambodia and Laos (the politicians thought the Geneva Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords or 1962 would secure the border). Correct. Shortly before 11 a.m. on May 18, the point squad in Company Bs 2nd Platoon spotted three NVA soldiers walking on a trail near the Cambodian border and attempted to capture them, but the NVA dashed off into the jungle. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture, was Vietnamese. As we approached the battle, we heard intense firing. Non-divisional aeromedical evacuation units went by the callsign DUSTOFF. Here are statistics from the Combat Area Casualty File (CACF) as of November 1993. Rarely do we examine war through the unique bond between a man and his weaponin this case the . Dont know why, but generally, their aircraft were not armed (door gunners, etc.). As mentioned, who kept track of that in the first place? Each company had eight M60s. Date: March 8, 2020 Author: pdoggbiker 97 Comments Photo above is of Stanley Kober with RTO, John Scheur. At Fort Lewis, every recruit learned to operate various weapons. Proudly holding my M60 over my head, I screamed at the top of my lungs, No. Welcome home brothers and sisters. I, in turn, would take an M16 rifle, which felt like a feather in comparison. Two of my classmates were killed within 2 weeks incountry and three wounded I know of. Four platoons in a rifle company. 2023 CherriesWriter - Vietnam War website, RTO, John Scheur. All that other stuff about seconds and minutes were story tellers, embellishing things to impress some listeners back home. Their personal income exceeds that of our non-veteran age group by more than 18 percent. Sergeant Galiano's experience does not deny Brands depiction of the battle in Vietnam, but offers a typically overlooked perspective of a drafted soldier fighting in the central highlands of Vietnam. Spanish Help We soon learned that the NVA troops were very different from the local guerrillas we had fought around Tuy Hoa. NFS. We took fire all the time and responded. Not to mention that right now its safer than some cities in the us. He was killed in an ambush along with three others. 99% of infantry men will currently live to die of natural causes. Take out the power center, youve got the edge. Was it left behind on some forgotten battlefield? Your article was quite interesting.